Pattern shows desperation not choice, says economist, as report reveals London is only area with marked growth in secure work"Self-employment is often a last resort of the desperate," Blanchflower said. He added: "Such workers operate under considerable strain, worried about where their income is coming from, and are sometimes forced to finance themselves by borrowing against their home, exposing their families to the same financial uncertainty that attaches to their job."Self-employment surge across UK hides real story behind upbeat job figures | Society | The Guardian

Independence, flexibility, “being my own boss”: this is how many self-employed people positively appraise their situation. In a country where power in the workplace has shifted so decisively towards employers – benevolent or tyrannical, it’s the luck of the draw – you can see why self-employment is almost a refuge for many. But self-employment spells precariousness, insecurity and falling living standards for all too many. Last week George Osborne lauded figures indicating that wages were rising; but what is often neglected is that the 15% of British workers who are self-employed are stripped out of these figures. There is little up-to-date research on their income, but the Resolution Foundation suggests that between 2006-07 and 2011-12 their weekly earnings dipped by a staggering 20% – and there was a big rise in underemployment, or self-employed people doing far fewer hours than they would like.

New research from Indeed shows that the impending introduction of the National Living Wage in April 2016 is seen as a key challenge for SMEs who are looking to hire.

Increased wage considerations are expected to make growth and expansion difficult for some SMEs

Over two-thirds of SMEs claim that the new ruling will negatively impact their ability to make hires and grow, while over a quarter already cite costs as the biggest challenge they face when hiring.

Commenting on these findings, Bill Richards, managing director UK at Indeed, said, “SMEs have less time and resources to devote to recruiting, making it increasingly difficult for them to compete with larger and more established companies for the best candidates. With staff costs rising, SMEs will need to find new efficiencies to maintain profit margins and ensure that they are still able to appeal to the most talented recruits. It is promising to see that so many small companies are already embracing a flexible workforce as an effective way to overcome the challenges of hiring in today’s market. Thanks to their nimble structure, SMEs are in many ways better placed than larger companies to take advantage of this new breed of jobseeker, which could help them to counteract the impact of the National Living Wage.”

"The lesson for a government is not to try to crack down on the shadow economy dramatically because, after all, you want people to buy goods and services that make them better off," he says. "The correct answer is to reduce the costs of operating in the formal economy and bring these transactions to the formal sector."

TaskRabbit offers what could be termed 'home help 2.0' - traditional services delivered in a way that is accessible to the digital generation, and in an real-time, on-demand format.

In all honesty, I don't think there's much of an advantage in hiring a tasker to do your grocery shopping over placing an online order directly with the supermarket. However, for those with one-off projects or the disposable income to absorb the costs, TaskRabbit and similar services such as Mopp seem like a logical innovation.

From my converstions with Liz and Laura, TaskRabbit works well for the taskers too. It allows them to organise their time the way they want, and make money during the gaps in their own busy lives.

It remains to be seen how scalable the service is, and whether standards will be maintained as the number of taskers expands, but it seems to me that it's off to a pretty good start.

The employment of the future is here, and it's terrific for everyone except the people doing the work. TaskRabbit, which lets you outsource the things you don't want to do to people who need money, is at the forefront of this chore revolution, and it's already making some lives harder.

In 1994, professors Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio published a book titled "The Jobless Future," surveying sea changes in the way people work. It didn't look good: "Today, the regime of world economic life consists in scratching every itch of everyday life with sci-tech," they wrote. A big heap of trivial problems were being solved by a bigger heap of trivial jobs, marked by a trend "toward more low-paid, temporary, benefit-free blue and white collar jobs and fewer decent permanent factory and office jobs."

Twenty years later, we've nearly perfected this ephemeral gig machine with TaskRabbit, a software engine that does for labor what Snapchat's done for memories.

TaskRabbit's premise is instantly charming: Fill as much of your idle time as you want with temporary work, from assembling IKEA furniture and scrubbing floors to making photocopies and decorating parties. It offers lackeys on demand, and like its automotive cousin Uber, has raised big venture capital bucks and cemented a role as spirit animal of the "sharing economy."

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